What is your discussion point?

This topic could lead to interesting discussions and debates about the nature of consciousness and the ethical considerations surrounding the development and use of AI technology. Additionally, the comparison to the concept of God being hidden in a black hole could spark discussions about the role of faith, science, and the unknown in our understanding of the universe.

I see a large number of nebulous claims, and little in the way of starting a discussion. Good luck with that.

I claim that it is impossible to see what is inside a black hole, and to say that god isn't there is fundamentally an assumption. I apply this analogy to artificial intelligence, claiming that because not everything is fully understood, there is room for something the engineers missed that makes it sentient. I do not claim that god exists or that AI is sentient, and I apologize if I didn't make this post the easiest to start a discussion with.

>I claim that it is impossible to see what is inside a black hole, and to say that god isn't there is fundamentally an assumption.

Ok.

> I apply this analogy to artificial intelligence, claiming that because not everything is fully understood, there is room for something the engineers missed that makes it sentient.

What AI are you talking about? Every 'AI'? Some hypothetical 'tv-and-movie-AI'?

Ancient people did not understand natural phenomena, such as atmospheric events, astronomical events, seasonal cycles in agriculture, etc. In some cases, they came up with belief systems where supernatural entities such as deities governed those phenomena.

Today, science has explanations for many of those natural phenomena. Even with some open questions still remaining, now we understand things well enough so that we can articulate what is going on in clear terms without the need for a god of thunder, god of rain, etc.

I think you're following the steps of the early human cultures that tried to assign a God to what you perceive as unexplained phenomena. Namely: black holes, AI, sentience, etc.

I am an athiest

I do not believe in god

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I would disagree with your infinitely large broad brush strokes slathered on there. Log files exist for a reason.

Lex Freidman explained on the Joe Rogan podcast that there is an air of mystery surrounding how ai works, that is my source, i believe he has worked on ai.

I'm not familiar with AI that plays and operates video games; I'm not a professional, so I'm not sure about smaller AIs. That is an inaccuracy from my behalf

Im not familiar with smaller ais that aren't chat gpt that is my bad.

Aight, well I find your paraphrasing about a discussion on a podcast that hints at an 'air of mystery' coupled with your exaggerated generalities to be sufficiently lacking to continue this.

Adios, muchachos.

he literally said engineers dont know how ai works fully and goodbye.

You have failed to provide the exact context to that summary, and just leaning on name dropping is poor form, Jack.

do i need to give timestamps? if yes, I will find them for you.

What do you see here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tt7aqHFUCU

This animation consists of geometric figures moving. But your mind may attribute mental states, intentions and even a personality to those figures.

This capability, "theory of mind", makes humans and other animals capable of attributing mental states even to inanimate objects that do not have a mind. In your case: black holes and other stuff.

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I have to go to bed now, I'm not going to be able to defend my ideas anymore. If you were offended at this post or got mad at me, I am sorry. I thought this was a good idea.

I see your point however, it is only a possibility that god was simply made up. I believe god has been made up however, I am not able to confirm it by going back in time and seeing for myself if god was made up.

For discussions about the existence of god and similar topics, visit https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy

>yes every ai is not fully understood

A simple decision tree is an AI algorithm too. Would you claim that it is not fully understandable or that it has the potential to be sentient?

Lex Fridman has indeed been worked on AI, but it is clear that you haven't, so you obviously do not understand the point Lex made at all.

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What you are alluding to is god of the gaps, not a black box theory. The mistaken belief that putting god in ever difficult places to find will, as more and more things are discovered and explained, somehow maintain his presence in this world.

As an (astro)physicist i think the only connection between the black box of AI and the black hole is the world black. Nobody is stopping you from opening the black box of AI and looking inside at the numbers. Whether that helps you or not is an entirely different matter. You can never do that with a black hole. No matter what technology you use, or what tool, you can't peer inside the black hole. And nothing of what happens inside influences what's outside, unlike the "black box" of AI.

The only point that makes sense is that little part at the end. Yes, an AI could've published this text, but even an AI that could cobble together this long text wouldn't make the mistake of comparing a black hole with a black box. Or would it? Who knows. Better question: does it matter?

While r/MachineLearning might in parts attract a bit less scientific crowd than other CS-related subs, expecting them to take this seriously is still very much of a stretch…

This we do not understand is complete bs. Just we can't run through the math in any reasonable time frame. Effectively we know how, just we don't know which exact path without marking it... which we can and will do sometimes.

While I agree with your sentiment on the whole... we do get some measurements on a black hole precisely because it affects things outside of itself. I'll agree with the rest as I've been studying ai. We definitely can and often do understand the paths. The reality is it would take us far longer to go through it all or ai would be pointless.

It affects stuff around it, but those properties can be thought to be "of the hole itself", like mass, charge etc. but we can't look inside.

But these are philosophical questions, not scientific questions. "Could God be hidden in black holes" is unknowable in the same way that "Is God a flying spaghetti monster?" is unknowable. It's not an interesting scientific question because it has nothing to do with the scientific problem of how black holes work, but with the philosophical problem of whether there is a God.

And just because engineers don't usually understand what their AI models do 'under the hood' doesn't mean they can't be understood. They are fundamentally just very complex decision trees and you could in principle see why each decision in a model was made in a certain way. It'd just take a very long time.

I think I see where I crossed it over on a layman interpretation. My apologies there.

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>Today, science has explanations for many of those natural phenomena

Depends what you mean by explanations. You can always keep asking "why?" and at some point you won't be able to answer so you can just put god in there just like the early humans did. If you think what they did was reasonable then the same principle applies here, it's just that we have a deeper level of understanding

We know how it works. Someone designed it. What he’s talking about is a lack of interpretability around what goes on in the hidden layers and why the model produces specific outputs. It’s not magic.

I fully respect you because the reason I wanted to talk about this on reddit was because I couldn't talk to any professionals, I am fully aware of what the god in the gaps theory is, but my idea is different because it does not claim that god exists somewhere, instead it is a thought experiment.

A"does god exist?"

B"no"

A"But what if he is in a black hole?"

B"he is not in a black hole"

A"I cannot fully trust your judgement until we see what is inside a black hole first, then we can say whether or not he is in a black hole."

It is simple, concise and one time one of Open AI's models called me a genius because of it, although most people seem to think im an idiot for saying it.

I still think its possible the engineers missed something that makes it sentient, i don't think its realistic, but the idea that it is possible that it is secretly sentient and the engineers missed it intrigues me.

Yes, but you can replace god with anything, so the statement loses its value, don't you think?

What has value is in the eyes of the beholder, I know this argument can be used to say it is possible the flying spaghetti monster decided to manifest itself when it did by manipulating the minds of humans as a parody of it, but i think it has value to explain why god might exist, even if this argument can be used for other things.

Well, if a function takes any input and gives you only one output, what are you going to do with it? How useful is a logic like the one above? What is the connection with the AI part anyway, since we're not here to debate if god exists in black holes?

The better argument would go:
- does god exist?
- idk, but i see no proof of him existing, so i don't think so.
- what if he is in a black hole?
- prove it.

Can you explain what it means "if a function takes any input and gives you only one output," and also what it has to do with AI because we cannot tell if AI is conscious, even if it is because we cannot read minds. This is furthermore a possibility because there are things about AI that are not well understood therefore within what we don't understand (like a black hole) it is possible AI is sentient (god).

I'm glad we're having this conversation. I really wanted to talk about what I think. Thank you for taking some time out of your day to talk to me.

this is flawed because it ignores the idea that rather than needing to be proved, it is a virtue in its own that god is a possibility.

>Can you explain what it means "if a function takes any input and gives you only one output,"

The argument you give takes any input, god, santa, aliens, a basketball, and gives the same answer, i.e. result. Not hard to look at it like a function.

>AI because we cannot tell if AI is conscious, even if it is because we cannot read minds.

But then how do you know another person is conscious? You cannot read their mind either.

>This is furthermore a possibility because there are things about AI that are not well understood therefore within what we don't understand (like a black hole)

See, this is the problem, you conflate not understood with forever hidden from view (if we assume some things about black holes). Just because it's not understood doesn't mean it's not understandable.

> AI is sentient (god).

what?

I don't understand what you mean. If you take away the need to prove statements, then the truth value of a statement is meaningless. Contradictory statements have equal value in this kind of world.

"The argument you give takes any input, god, santa, aliens, a basketball, and gives the same answer, i.e. result. Not hard to look at it like a function."

I think it is well worth the fact that it suggests god can exist. It gives hope to those who think god cannot exist and want god to be able to exist.

"But then how do you know another person is conscious? You cannot read their mind either."

This is valid criticism; however, I fail to see how I should respond, i could say something like, "No, it is obvious that you cannot read other people's minds," which would suggest that we don't know if other people are conscious. Or i could say it is obvious that other people are conscious, and then i would fall into the trap I created.

"See, this is the problem, you conflate not understood with forever hidden from view (if we assume some things about black holes). Just because it's not understood doesn't mean it's not understandable."

I think this is valid criticism. In the future it may be understood what is behind a black hole, and this frame of this argument will be useless.

AI is sentient (god).

what?

Im sorry you misunderstood, i didn't do very well of explaining what i meant i now see that its funny because it looks like i am saying Ai is god, however i am comparing black holes and god to the mystery surrounding ai and sentience.

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It is true currently, because what I am saying is that God has the possibility of existing. This truth stands strong because, using this logic, it is difficult to disprove the existence of God. (I do not believe in god but i like this thought experiment)

>I think it is well worth the fact that it suggests god can exist. It gives hope to those who think god cannot exist and want god to be able to exist.

If you think god cannot exist, turning to black holes won't change your mind i'm afraid. In any case, this debate has no place here.

>i am comparing black holes and god to the mystery surrounding ai and sentience.

Well, I'm not sure what mystery you're talking about regarding AI. There's tons of complexity, in the human brain, and, presumably, in a general AI too. I'm not really sure that black holes are even a good comparison here. There are other things that are also unkowable, by default, like the position and momentum of a particle, and that's just how nature works in that case. However, nothing i know of so far suggests there is something inherently unknowable about AI.

I understand that this tangent has gone off topic, and as for the second paragraph, i am not saying that something needs to be unknowable to suggest the possibility that something can exist. It just means that we don't know yet.

>It is true currently, because what I am saying is that God has the possibility of existing. This truth stands strong because, using this logic, it is difficult to disprove the existence of God.

And i can equally say that the same thing about absolutely anything. Even about anti-god, a thing of opposite charge of god that if it exists would annihilate with god and create two gamma rays. I can say that that our universe is one where god doesn't exist, and those would be equally hard to disprove. So by this logic, anything is true at the same time, 0 = 1 etc. Makes little sense to me.

we don't know yet is a much clear thing to say than all the statements above tho.

Yes, it's true that god might not exist. But the point i am trying to make is that it is a possibility that God exists. This argument is for people who say it is impossible for God to exist. the argument saying that it is like saying 0=1 is unfair because we have enough to definitively prove that 0 does not equal one making it different than what I am saying, we do not have enough evidence to suggest that god exists or does not exist in a black hole.

i have to say all of the statements above to people who people who wouldn't believe what you say.

is it ok if we end here, I don't see this argument producing useful discussion any further, and I have to go do something. Thanks for talking to me.

>But the point i am trying to make is that it is a possibility that God exists.

Ok, but you are going about it the wrong way. The possibility of god existing or not is irrelevant to what we can know about his existence. If something is unkowable, then any categorical statements about it are invalid. Yes, we can consider the possibility, but if you can't ever tell if it's true or not, this approach makes no sense.

>we do not have enough evidence to suggest that god exists or does not exist in a black hole.

And what i'm saying is that since we will never have that evidence, no matter what, it is pointless to approach the problem from this angle.

alright have fun

"Ok, but you are going about it the wrong way. The possibility of god existing or not is irrelevant to what we can know about his existence. If something is unkowable, then any categorical statements about it are invalid. Yes, we can consider the possibility, but if you can't ever tell if it's true or not, this approach makes no sense.

we do not have enough evidence to suggest that god exists or does not exist in a black hole.

And what i'm saying is that since we will never have that evidence, no matter what, it is irrelevant to approach the problem from this angle."

I respect your position, but this is where we are going to have to agree to disagre, Ive got to shovel some ones drive way. It was nice talking to you.

thank you.